Young workers want it all, now

Oh, and they'll need to take next Friday off, too

Martha Irvine, The Associated Press

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, June 26, 2005

CHICAGO -- Evan Wayne, hoping to land a job in radio sales, thought he was prepared for anything during a recent interview.

Then the interviewer hit the 24-year-old Chicagoan. "So, we call you guys the 'Entitlement Generation,' " the baby-boomer executive said, expressing an oft-heard view of today's young work force. "You think you're entitled to everything."

Being labeled is, perhaps, a rite of passage for every crop of twentysomethings. In their day, baby boomers were rabble-rousing hippies, and Gen Xers were apathetic slackers.

Now, deserved or not, this latest generation is being pegged, too -- as one with shockingly high expectations for salary, job flexibility and duties but little willingness to take on grunt work or remain loyal to a company.

"We're seeing an epidemic of people who are having a hard time making the transition to work -- kids who had too much success early in life and who've become accustomed to instant gratification," says Dr. Mel Levine, a pediatrics professor at the University of North Carolina Medical School and author of a book on the topic called "Ready or Not, Here Life Comes."

Although Levine also notes that today's twentysomethings are long on idealism and altruism, "many of the individuals we see are heavily committed to something we call 'fun.' "

He partly faults coddling parents and colleges for doing little to prepare students for the realities of adulthood and setting the course for what many disillusioned twentysomethings are calling their "quarter-life crisis."

Meanwhile, employers from corporate executives to restaurateurs and retailers are frustrated.

"It seems they want and expect everything that the 20- or 30-year veteran has the first week they're there," says Mike Amos, a Salt Lake City-based franchise consultant for Perkins Restaurants.

Just about any twentysomething will tell you they know someone like that and may even have some of those high expectations themselves.

Wayne had this response for his interviewer at the radio station: "Maybe we WERE spoiled by your generation. But I think the word 'entitled' isn't necessarily the word," he said. "Do we think we're deserving if we're going to go out there and bust our ass for you? Yes."

He ended up getting the job -- and, as he starts this month, is vowing to work hard.

Some experts who study young people think having some expectations, and setting limits with bosses, isn't necessarily negative.

"It's true they're not eager to bury themselves in a cubicle and take orders from bosses for the next 40 years, and why should they?" asks Jeffrey Arnett, a University of Maryland psychologist who has written a book on "emerging adulthood," the period between age 18 and 25. "They have a healthy skepticism of the commitment their employers have to them and the commitment they owe to their employers."

Many young people also want to avoid becoming just another cog who works for a faceless giant.

Liz Ryan speculates that a more relaxed work environment at the company she runs -- no set hours and "a lot of latitude in how our work gets done" -- helps inspire her younger employees.

"Maybe twentysomethings have figured out something that boomers like me took two decades to piece together: Namely, that there's more to life than by-the-book traditional career success," says Ryan, the 45-year-old CEO of a Colorado-based company called WorldWIT, an on- and offline networking organization for professional women.

As much as some employers would like to resist the trend, a growing number are searching for ways to retain twentysomething employees -- and to figure out what makes them tick.

"The manager who says I don't have time for that is going to be stuck on the endless turnover treadmill," says Eric Chester, a Colorado-based consultant who works with corporations to help them understand what he calls "kidployees," ages 16 to 24.

At Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, for instance, administrators have developed an internship with mentoring and more training for young nurses that has curbed turnover by more than 50 percent and increased job satisfaction.

Amos at Perkins Restaurants says small changes also have helped -- loosening standards on piercings or allowing cooks to play music in the kitchen.

And Muvico, a company with movie theaters in a few Southern states, gives sporting goods and music gift certificates to young staffers who go beyond minimum duties.

"If you just expect them to stand behind a register and smile, they're not going to do that unless you tell them why that's important and then recognize them for it," says John Spano, Muvico's human resources director.